by Aiden James
“Not even an itty-bitty—”
His reply was cut short by a loud rapping on the back door. Mom and Alisia went to investigate. I was slightly disappointed we wouldn’t get to hear my grandparents’ Romanian accents steadily become more pronounced as they verbally sparred. Often, this was when Alisia and I would pick up some of the older Romanian words and phrases we might never hear otherwise.
“Who is it?” asked Grandma.
“I have no idea… an older woman with what looks like a pie in her hands,” Mom said, and I could almost feel the forced smile from where I stood, just outside the kitchen doorway in the foyer, with Dad and Grandpa trying to peek around my shoulder. She opened the door.
“Kitchen-back-patio door… open!”
“I really like that gal’s voice,” whispered Dad from behind me.
“The woman talking to Silvia?” teased Grandpa.
“No.” Dad sounded pained. “You know… the security alarm lady.”
“Ahhh… I bet Sebastian likes her, too, eh?”
“Huh?” I glanced behind me, where Dad and Grandpa eyed me playfully. “Oh, no… she’s too old for me, I do believe.”
“The British gal, or the nice old lady that your mother just let into the house?”
“Both.” My tone matched my father’s from a moment ago, drawing an amused chuckle from Grandpa.
“Actually, kiddo, I do believe you are twice as old as the one in the kitchen and at least triple the years of the other.”
“Very funny,” I grumbled, but smiling. Where would I be without Grandpa’s ever-present sense of humor? At least it provided something to hang on to, as the full relocation realization would soon hit me.
“…. Well, I saw y’all drive up and I just had to come over and welcome everybody to the neighborhood!” announced the woman, waving to the three of us males after setting down a jar of blackberry compote to go with the enticing cheesecake Mom sat down on the kitchen island. “My name is Sadee Dean… and that’s with two E’s instead of an IE or Y for Sadee! When y’all get settled, I’d love to have you over for dinner—my husband, Dan, and I live two doors down from here.”
She pointed to the east, up Old Dominion Road, and I recalled that all of the homes on this side of the street were sort of stately, though not near as grand as the mini-palace my folks and grandparents had landed us. Sadee Dean carried an infectious personality… so warm and bubbly, with similar energy to my grandmother. Her eyes were hidden behind thick prescription glasses, so I couldn’t tell the color. And with just a little gray in her dark brown hair that was coifed just above the neckline of her blouse, I would’ve guessed her age to be early sixties. She didn’t dress like an older woman, wearing faded Levis and youthful sandals.
“Well, would you look at these!” she enthused, moving over to the broomsticks. I doubt she detected the slight flinch from Mom and Grandma, nor the even slighter movement in the broomsticks, as they are attuned to their user, or ‘master’, like a living thing. “If you don’t mind me askin’, where’d you find ‘em?”
Grandma moved over and picked up hers and lovingly stroked it, motioning for Sadee to brush her hands across it.
“Both have been in our family for many years, and come from Romania,” she said, which drew a cautious look from Mom. “I don’t think they make anything quite like them in America.” Grandma chuckled warmly, while Sadee continued to pet the broomstick. Perhaps, she felt the thing’s energy. It must’ve been calm, since an irritated broomstick could well fly out of someone’s hands if the chemistry wasn’t right, or it ‘felt’ threatened.
“Well, I have never… never seen or experienced anything quite like this before,” said Sadee, gently pulling back her hand, as if suddenly aware of the broomstick’s potentially volatile nature.
“Thank you for what looks like a delicious treat!” enthused my mother, who genuinely seemed to like this lady with the weird spelling of her first name and a dangerous curiosity about broomsticks. “I bet it disappears tonight.”
Sadee blushed and told her softly that she hoped so.
“I’d like to introduce all of you to your neighbors. The good ones, that is.” She laughed. “Once you get settled, maybe we can arrange for a get together at our place, where Dan and I can introduce y’all to everyone…. Well, I’m sure you’d like some time to get familiar with your wonderful new home. The Clarkes were good people, and I’m sure you are, too. If you need anything at all, feel free to give me a holler…. Here’s my number. Dan and I will be happy to help you in any way we can.”
She handed mom a piece of stationary with her name and phone number written on it.
“Take care—nice to meet y’all!”
And just like that, Sadee maneuvered her way to the back door like she knew the place quite well, and was out of the house before Mom, Grandma, and Alisia could finish their “Nice to meet you, too” and goodbyes. As for the guys, I guess we knew better than to even try.
“That woman is an old soul… and a good one, too,” Grandma remarked, watching Sadee cut through the next door neighbor’s yard to reach her back patio, barely visible from where our house sat.
“And, she’s a damned good cook,” added Grandpa, after helping himself to a piece of cheesecake, but forgoing the compote.
“I like her, too,” said Mom, thoughtfully. She smiled, and my sister nodded approvingly, as if Alisia put the old gal through her own weighted analysis and came out with a favorable verdict. “In fact, I think I like her better than the others we met last week.”
“She seems nice,” Dad agreed, joining Grandpa in the preliminary attack on the ‘Welcome to the Neighborhood’ gift. “But, it’s going to take you and Mother some time to adjust to the reality of neighbors just dropping by, eh? But if that’s how people are here, it might be a good idea to adapt to how they are so we can blend in better. It could give us extra protection in case ‘you know who’ ever comes looking for us.”
“And if the older ones are the standard for this place, they’ll be dead and buried before anyone recognizes the fact that the Radus have barely aged,” joked Grandpa. “At least it could buy us a few years to decide where to establish our roots more permanently… either here or somewhere else.”
Chapter Four
As promised, the lady named Sadee didn’t introduce us to the wrong, or bad, neighbors. Those folks, and the local panhandlers, took care of that honor themselves.
The first incident happened roughly a week after we moved in to the new place. Alisia and I had been getting used to the broader neighborhood—both the upstanding areas and what is officially considered the ‘hood’—and had also started familiarizing ourselves with the town’s layout. Our first priority was to find the local Wal-Mart, the best grocery stores, and the retailers whose specialty was either new fashion clothing for her or the latest games and electronics for me. Along the way, we also discovered the horrid offerings of what is considered the restaurant industry in Denmark. For the latter, it was usually a case of the food being terrible and the service being passable, or the food being edible and the service being nonexistent.
“So, Mom and Dad… all the talk about good ole southern cooking and hospitality is a crock of shit. At least in this wee little town, huh?” I joked.
I was preparing to join my sis outside in the front yard, where she had already started that day’s weeding assignment. Halfway through cleaning up the extensive gardens surrounding the house, we could look forward to more of the same when we took our act to the area surrounding the barn the next week. Then, the week after, it would be time to work the front of the property again, and back and forth until October, when the first frost would usually arrive in this region of the country.
“Not true,” said Mom, seemingly more at peace that morning than she had been in quite a while. Not since the ongoing war with the Mateis began to escalate in violence last year. “Gabe and I had a wonderful dinner at Sadee’s last night.”
“Amazing Creol
e fare,” Dad added, looking up from his first copy of the Denmark Gazette. The two were sharing breakfast—something they had also gotten away from in the past few years. Maybe moving to Denmark was a good thing? At least for them… glad someone was getting something gratifying out of it. “Sadee and the board members from the art school that sits at the rear edge of our property warned us about the restaurants in Denmark. Apparently, we’ll have to drive to Murray, Kentucky, or down to Jackson in the south, or even Clarksville to the east if we want decent food…. And service, since that also seems to be lacking here.”
To be fair, my parents hadn’t gone on the eatery tour with Alisia and me. That’s cool, I guess. They seemed to be having more fun with their new friends and exploring culinary experiments in their grand new kitchen—which apparently had rarely been used by the Clarkes, according to Sadee and the other ‘good’ neighbors. So, I suppose there was a compliment in there somewhere for my sister and me, since Mom and Dad trusted our restaurant reviews.
As for our grandparents? True to form, they had yet to relinquish their previous habits and still traveled elsewhere by broomstick. Since they hadn’t complained about the food here in town, they certainly hadn’t tried it. Or, perhaps they had found some local hole-in-the-wall diner that escaped the plague of apathy infecting the rest of the town’s eateries. Regardless, I could tell their frequent excursions greatly annoyed my mother, and pretty much my father, too. I overheard Dad tell Mom to give Grandpa and Grandma time, since in addition to the move, both were moving into their twilight years. It wasn’t unusual for Romanian warlocks and witches above five hundred years on this planet to suddenly feel restless. I knew Mom was biding her time, and would soon begin to work on Grandma to try and control Grandpa’s wanderlust.
Good luck with that, Mommy Dear.
Without any way to legitimately delay my role in the ruse to appear as two teenagers earning their keep by doing outside chores, I stepped out onto the front porch. I’ve come to especially enjoy the view from there, picturing what the house and neighborhood looked like before 1900. Four Doric columns, capped with hand-carved angels and some sort of flower, have supported the porch long before the iron fence and ornate gate came along, marking the entrance to the property. The house sitting directly across from us on Old Dominion is one of the nicer Victorians in the area, complete with a pair of turrets, intricate spindle work, and a widow’s walk atop the tallest roof. Honestly, if it had been up to me, or I had been deluded enough to spearhead a move to some rural town, then I would’ve insisted on a house that looked like this one. I’m a Victorian guy, remember? And the Queen Anne influence from 1880 to 1910 marked the finest examples of Victorian architecture. Just sayin’.
Not that I’ve changed my mind about the Cat Daddy place we were testing fate with, but my style preference is just a little later. Anyway, I was curious about the owners, since we saw an attractive woman once, and Mom waved to her. Apparently my parents met her at one of the functions Mom and Dad attended this past week. My mother said the woman, named Meredith, was nice and that her husband was an author who kept really strange hours. He sounded interesting to me, especially since he is supposed to be some popular horror writer.
If only he had been the neighbor keeping an eye on Alisia and I as we worked in the yard each day. Unfortunately, that guy lived to the right of our place, on Chaffin’s Bend. The owner of another older home, a sprawling one-story with loads of potential, he appeared to be a handy man by trade. At least his truck looked like that was the vocation; although the man, who appeared to be in his early forties, was almost always home. Home and keeping a watchful eye on us.
“He’s kind of creepy,” Alisia remarked two days before.
After that, she made a point to ignore him, though he could never present a physical danger to either of us.
I decided this would be the day I took matters into my own and made contact with him. An opportune moment came after I had cleared several rows of dandelions and stubborn clover from the sides of the main brick walkway to the house. The guy came out to get something from the back of his truck, and we made eye contact. I waved cautiously. The man eyed me as if I had just flipped him off, and I could sense the anger exuding from him. I thought maybe he misunderstood my gesture, and waved more boldly. His eyebrows furrowed as if in disbelief. He stormed inside his house, slamming the front door loud enough to get Alisia to look up and pull down the headphones to her iPod.
“What did you do?” she asked, looking toward the house, which truth be told carried enough crap in the front to count as a salvage yard, or more appropriately, a mini-dump.
“I waved to him,” I told her, snickering while shaking my head. After getting snubbed twice, I decided that was it for this idiot.
Alisia and I moved on to one of the bigger flower gardens and were making great progress when a kid came up to us. Even if we didn’t have a single intuitive gift, figuring out that he was the strange man’s son would be instantaneous for most people. At least that’s my assumption, based on him wearing the same befuddled expression with furrowed eyebrows. Only the unprovoked psychotic rage was missing.
“Can I help you with something?” I asked him.
“Need some help? I can pull those for y’all.” He was thinner than his father, and a few inches shorter, being maybe five-foot-ten, and he avoided the genes that gave Daddy the bush of red hair that framed a gaunt, near-toothless face. Same lifeless brown eyes, though.
Roughly Alisia’s physical age, the kid turned away shyly when she looked up at him. She then turned a hopeful look to me, since she hates manual labor in the humid southern sunshine even more than I do. In fact, she had just been joking about how she was turning into the green-faced witch from Wizard of Oz—both in irritation and in the literal sense of melting.
The pleading look in her eyes intensified, which made me hesitate on dismissing the kid’s offer to take over for us.
“This is part of our assigned chores,” I told him. “But, I’ll go ahead and ask our parents, and get back to you on your offer. Okay?”
He nodded, and seemed somewhat relieved. Probably didn’t want to be stuck doing this shit in near-ninety degree weather and high humidity either.
“You should’ve had him wait a moment while you or I went in to ask Mom and Dad,” Alisia lamented. She groaned as we returned to our task.
Less than a minute after the kid disappeared inside his house, another angry door-slam pulled our attention. Dude’s dad stormed across the street and didn’t stop until he threw open the side gate and reached the edge of the garden we were working on.
“Y’all think yer too good for us, do ya now? You northern city-slickers might know a thang or two ‘bout us, but y’all don’t know the half of it,” he snarled. “That thar’s some shit!”
Without waiting for a reply, he turned and stomped toward the gate.
“What in the hell was that all about?” Alisia asked, worriedly. “And what’s with this asshole’s attitude?”
“Well, it depends… mostly on what the mess pouring out of his mouth translates to in proper English.” I chuckled. “Maybe we can teach him a lesson in that regard.”
Not that either of us were afraid of the guy, since physically, we could break his neck like a chicken’s and push his corpse down into the earth so deep the moles would come running out. And, yes, there were signs of moles tunneling to their gleeful content throughout the yard. Apparently, the little blind bastards are as tough to eradicate as they are destructive.
“Or, we could turn him into a mole,” offered Alisia, privy to my thoughts. An unfortunate and advantageous gift she shares with Mom.
She and I watched the guy navigate the medieval-looking pathway that’s so very Lord of the Rings, with its uneven stones that have been pushed up and aside at various points by the roots of several immense black walnut trees. The exposed nineteenth century bricks were apparently once covered by cement that had since crumbled and deteriorated to look like
random flat stones intermixed with the bricks. Totally badass in appearance, and certainly fun to watch our ill-natured neighbor stumble on.
“He might be happier as a slug to feed a mole,” I said.
Footsteps on the grass behind us pulled our attention.
“Can I help you with something?” Dad called to the man, eying us suspiciously, despite our hands filled of weeds. We looked productive at the right time… or did we? Meanwhile, our surly neighbor had just opened the side gate, which resounded with a loud screech.
“Nah… don’t think so,” said the man, over his shoulder. “You just keep a watch on those kids, ya here? Teach em’ to respect where they’s at…. Y’all ain’t livin’ in the big city no more!”
Dad watched him leave and then turned to us again.
“You didn’t do anything… foolish. Right?”
“Like what?” asked Alisia sweetly. “That guy’s son wanted to pull the weeds for us, which might be kind of nice. Bas told him we had to talk it over with you first.”
“Which is true,” I said. “After all, you and Mom said we’ve gotta look like we don’t know where our next meal’s coming from. Right?”
“Must you always make your allegories so extreme?”
“It’s not really an allegory, Dad… just an observation.”
“That’s not what we told you. Just look like two kids with summer chores… like how everyone else lives around here.”
“Why can’t we be like the kids living two blocks from here?” I persisted, unable to zip my lips. Maybe it was the heat… or maybe it was the fact this latest con of trying to act like normal people seemed especially asinine to me. “The ones in the confirmed ‘hood’ Sadee told us about? You know, sellin’ crack or waitin’ on the mailman for that government check?”
“Cool it, Sebastian,” said Dad, sternly. “We need to fit in, and if this guy is already saying we stick out like a sore thumb, then we’ve got a lot of work to do. Don’t we?”
